A Set of Ten Chinese Export Famille-Rose Armorial Plates for the Spanish Market Qing Dynasty, Qianlong Period, Circa 1769 | 清乾隆 約1769年 粉彩紋章圖盤十件

For the arms, see Rocío Díaz, Chinese Armorial Porcelain for Spain, London, 2010, cat. no. 20. The author notes that the present service, made for Cayetano Pignatelli, left Manila in December 1769 and arrived in Cádiz, Spain in August 1770 on board the Spanish vessel Buen Consejo. Documents detailing this shipment on board the Buen Consejo are in the collection of the General Archive of the Indies (Archivo General de Indias), which include a cargo register listing the Marquis of Rubí service and related customs clearance documents presented in Cádiz. According to the customs clearance papers, the original service consisted of 542 pieces held in five crates, of which 130 were discovered broken as noted by officials at the Royal House of Trade in Cádiz. Chinese export porcelains with such detailed accounts are rare, and provides scholars a glimpse of vibrant trade between China and the West in the 18th century.

Cayetano Pignatelli was born in Barcelona in 1730, and by 1752 he was already Marquis of Rubí and colonel of the Napoles Infantry Regiment. He took part in an expedition to establish a regular army with a European structure in New Spain in 1764. He was commissioned to visit the presidios (garrisons) of the northern frontier and was instrumental in the issuance of the royal order known as the New Regulations for Presidios in 1772 as a result of his recommendation to reorganize Spain's defensive positions along the northern border from the Gulf of California to the mouth of the Guadalupe River in Texas.

The arms painted on the present examples were often misattributed to the Swedish family Kopersled of Schole in the past, and later identified by scholars as the arms of Pignatelli family of Italy. It is now known that these are in fact the arms of the aforementioned Cayetano Pignatelli, a Spanish nobleman of Italian origin. Another misconception surrounding Cayetano Pignatelli is that he is often described as the Inspector General of New Spain during his time abroad in various catalogue entries. In fact, it was José de Gálvez y Gallardo, 1st Marquess of Sonora, who was the Inspector of New Spain during that time. Gálvez also commissioned a Chinese export armorial service bearing his arms, and a goose tureen from that service, formerly in the collection of Nelson and Happy Rockefeller, sold in these rooms, January 18th, 2019, lot 323.